Maybe This Time

Eight

Andie could see the stone floor flickering through May’s skirt as she swished it, and the old vertigo came back with a new surge of terror that this was real, that she wasn’t hallucinating, that there were ghosts and one of them was talking to her right now and the other was at the foot of Alice’s bed, that Alice was there, she had to get Alice out of there-

If I were you, May said, I’d call North. He ought to be here. He ought to help.

“May,” Andie said, making one last grab for sanity. “You’re a dream.”

No, May said, flipping her skirt again, like a teenager trying to be cool. That was really me, talking to you. I wanted to see if you were a keeper.

“A keeper,” Andie said, her heart pounding as she looked back at the thing at the foot of the bed, terrible in its immobility, more terrible when it moved. Gotta get Alice out of here, gotta find out if I’m losing my mind, gotta talk to Dennis, gotta get Alice out of here-

The other nannies were boring, May said. You’re different. And you’re married to North Archer.

Andie kept her eye on the thing. “Listen, if it’s all right with you, I’ll just move Alice into my bedroom-”

My bedroom. That’s my bedroom. You’re just sleeping there.

“The nursery,” Andie said. The thing at the foot of Alice’s bed drifted a little as she watched it, like a sheer drapery caught by a draft, but mostly it just stood and stared at Alice. “We’ll both sleep in the nursery and you can have your bedroom back-”

She won’t let you take Alice. May left the doorway and came closer, and Andie backed up a step as more cold hit her. That wack job’ll kill you dead if you try to move Alice. I tried to get the kids out of here, I knew they’d have a better life in Columbus if we went to live with North Archer, and that bitch put me over the gallery railing. Alice saw her do it. You’d think she’d have thought of Alice, wouldn’t you? What kind of thing is that for a kid to see, her aunt murdered? But no, she put me over right in front of her. May swished her skirt again. Of course, she has no brain, so thinking was probably not part of the picture.

“Jesus,” Andie said, looking at the thing at the foot of Alice’s bed with even more horror than before. “Does Alice know she’s there? Can Alice see her?”

Of course. She’s always been there for Alice.

Andie thought of the little girl, living with that horror her entire life. “Oh, God.”

That’s nothing. You know why Carter’s sleeping in that room at the front of the house? Crumb thinks he killed me and he might do her next, so she keeps him as far away from her as possible, locks her door at night, and drinks herself unconscious. She dragged my body out to the moat so he wouldn’t be suspected because she doesn’t want anybody shutting this house down, but she won’t talk to him because she thinks he did me in. And he thinks Alice did it because I’d kind of yelled at her right before that. You know Alice, she has a temper.

Andie tore her eyes from the thing to face May. “You didn’t tell Mrs. Crumb the truth? You didn’t tell Carter?”

She doesn’t trust me, May said, her beautiful lips curving in a beautiful dead smile. She doesn’t like me.

Andie swallowed, trying to process it all. She was having another conversation with a ghost. With May, who was practically a pal at this point, especially in comparison with the horror at the foot of Alice’s bed. “The… thing at the foot of the bed. The one who watches Alice. What… who is that?”

An old governess, May said, drifting up to stand beside Andie, bringing icy cold with her. Alice calls her “Miss J.” There’s not much left of her. It’s been over two hundred years. The humanity kind of evaporates after a while and all that’s left is the need, the thing they didn’t get while they were alive. For her, it’s Alice. All she wants it Alice. Try to take Alice from her, hurt Alice, and she’ll get rid of you, but she won’t talk. She doesn’t have anything to say. She’s just… a need. A thing. A thing that holds on to Alice.

“She won’t hurt Alice,” Andie said, zeroing in on the important part.

Her whole existence is Alice. She’s still here because Alice is here. She loves her, as much as a thing like that can love.

“Okay,” Andie said, not really reassured but taking what she could get. Her left side was icy cold because May was standing there, but it seemed rude to move away, and until she had a grasp on what the hell was going on, she wasn’t doing anything rude. She looked back at the thing. It was still drifting at the foot of Alice’s bed, its hands folded at its waist, watching her. “So, listen, I need to go see a friend of mine.”

You need to call North. Things are going to get a lot worse now that all these people are here.

“People.”

There’s a lot of energy here now, May said, stretching like a cat. Lots of emotion. You know that little blonde who came here with your friend? She’s sleeping with the other guy, the one with the camera. And he’s jealous of your friend. He had a fight with her earlier tonight. It was fabulous, all that emotion. Perked us all right up.

“Oh, hell,” Andie said, believing every word of it.

No, no, it’s good. Makes us stronger. She’s probably gonna sleep with your friend tonight, that’ll be good for a recharge because the other guy’s really jealous. And then when your friend finds out he’s being cheated on, we’ll really be cooking. May smiled at Andie. It was harder when it was just you. You were too calm with the kids, the other nannies went crazy, but you just kept plugging away. We got stronger whenever you talked to North, though. I can’t believe you left him. You should call him now, have him come here.

“I’m marrying somebody else,” Andie lied.

May laughed. Nobody believes that. Even she doesn’t believe that-she nodded to the thing at the end of Alice’s bed-and she doesn’t have a brain anymore. It’s North who makes you hot. Bring him here and we’ll all be happy.

“I’m having a hard time with this,” Andie said, holding onto the raveling edges of her sanity while she stared at the thing. It was a ghost. It was definitely a ghost. She was talking to a ghost. They were both ghosts. There were ghosts. We have ghosts.

May nodded. Hey, I understand. I didn’t even know there were ghosts when I was alive. You’re ahead of the game.

“Yay,” Andie said.

Call North. Alice is safe here. Go.

“Right.” Andie looked once more at Alice, wrapped in her comforter and sound asleep, and at the hollow-eyed thing at the end of her bed.

Alice is safe, May said again. That thing has been with her since she was born. Go call North.

“Okay,” Andie said. “I’ll be back. Don’t… do anything.”

Then she escaped into the warmth of the hall and ran for Dennis.

Half an hour later, after a visit to Alice’s room where Dennis failed to see or feel anything out of the ordinary even though the thing was right there at the foot of the bed, Andie stood in the hall just outside Alice’s door listening to him give several non-ghostly explanations for what she’d seen while she kept her eye on the thing. He could talk as long as he liked, but she’d passed from wavering on the ghost question to being a true believer. “There are ghosts here,” she told Dennis. “I can’t leave Alice alone in there with that thing.” She looked through the door to where Alice slept peacefully under the dead gaze of a dead governess. “I should be in there with her. She’s in there with her.”

“Okay.” Dennis smiled at her as if she were a stubborn undergraduate. “Let’s assume there are ghosts.”

“Yes, let’s.”

He gave her a stern look. “Hysteria will not help. You’re starting to sound like Kelly. Has this ghost ever hurt Alice before?”

“The one at the foot of the bed? No. The other ghost, May, says Alice is safe.”

“Then she is,” Dennis said.

“Dennis, you don’t know that, you don’t even believe in her. I can’t leave my baby in there with her.”

“Alice is not a baby. Alice is an extremely intelligent, extremely adept little girl. Leave her be and go to bed. You’re exhausted and hallucinating.”

“Go to bed? There are ghosts in this house. I have to do something about this. The séance. My mother said you can ask ghosts to leave in a séance. Is that true?”

“Well, you can ask, but séances are superstition and chicanery,” Dennis said, his basset-hound eyes practically rolling. “You’ll just be fueling a charlatan’s ego and reputation.”

“Good, we’ll do that,” Andie said, and went out into the main hall and headed down the stairs to the second floor to find where Kelly was sleeping.

But Kelly wasn’t in her room, and it wasn’t until Andie looked over the gallery railing that she found her in the darkened Great Hall, talking in low tones to Bill, the cameraman.

“The séance tomorrow,” Andie called to her over the rickety railing. “Bring on your medium, I’m all for it.”

“Wonderful!” Kelly called back. “Oh, Andie… honey… that’s wonderful. Bill and I were just talking about that… hoping you’d change your mind, and we’re so glad.” She treated Andie to a flash of teeth in the dim light and then went on, her voice a little unsteady, as if she were drunk. “I’ll call Isolde to confirm now that you’re on board.” Her smile morphed into manufactured sympathy. “You look really wiped out… all these unexpected guests. You go back up to bed and get some rest now.”

“Right,” Andie said, and went back up to Alice’s room, sparing a thought about warning Southie that Kelly was two-timing him. And when he asked why, she could tell him that a ghost told her. One crisis at a time.

When Andie went in, the old ghost was still standing at the end of the bed, her hands folded in the flounces of her skirt, her eyes still empty pits, and Alice was still fast asleep. May had been waltzing around in the hall by the bathroom, but she came back in when Andie went in.

Did you call North?

“No,” Andie said, as she felt Alice’s forehead for fever or any other signs of distress.

Alice smiled in her sleep and then rolled over.

Alice is fine. I told you, that nightmare has been watching her since birth.

Andie turned on May. “She’s a nightmare? What does that make you?”

Hey, May said. All I ever did was ask you questions. She swished her skirts again. You were sleeping in my bedroom. You owed me that much. When are you going to call North?

“Tomorrow,” Andie lied, sitting down on the floor next to Alice’s bed. “It’s too late, he’ll be in bed now.”

He won’t care if it’s you.

“No.” Andie leaned her head against Alice’s mattress. She wasn’t calling North, that was the last thing she needed, North here feeding May’s fantasies, not to mention her own. No, she was going to have a séance, tell the ghosts to leave, and then get the kids the hell out of Dodge and back to Columbus. There might be ghosts in Columbus, too, but she was damn sure they weren’t in North’s house. If they fed on emotion, they’d starve to death there.

Call him tomorrow then, May said and left, and Andie wrapped her arms around herself against the cold from the thing at the end of the bed and settled down to watch through the night until Alice woke up.

When Alice woke up the next morning, she looked at Andie, half asleep with her head on the side of the bed, and said, “What are you doing?”

Andie straightened to get the crick out of her neck and checked out the foot of the bed. Nothing there. “I was worried.”

Alice looked down at her, perplexed. “Why?”

“Because there was a ghost at the end of your bed.”

“There aren’t any such things as ghosts.”

“I saw her, Alice,” Andie said, pretty sure it was the right thing to say. “Your aunt May told me all about her. I can see them just like you can.”

Alice stared at her for a long moment, and Andie thought, She doesn’t see ghosts, she thinks I’m crazy, she thinks she’s trapped with a crazy person, and then Alice said, “That’s just Miss J. She doesn’t hurt me.”

“Miss J.” Andie was torn between relief that Alice saw the ghosts, too, and horror that Alice saw the ghosts, too. “Good to know. We’re moving into the nursery anyway.” Andie got up slowly as her muscles screamed. “You and me. There are two beds in there. We’ll be roommates.”

Alice shrugged. “Miss J can go in there, too.”

“Yeah, but in there I have a bed,” Andie said, and went to take a shower and face her day.

It began with cornering Carter in the library where he was reading in the window seat, ignoring the storm that still raged outside.

“I talked to your aunt May last night,” she said to him, and watched his eyes freeze on the page. “She said Mrs. Crumb thinks you killed her, but it was the ghost at the foot of Alice’s bed who pushed her through the railing because she was going to take Alice away. I don’t know how ghosts can push humans, but May says that’s what happened.”

He kept his eyes on his book.

“She thinks you think Alice did it.”

He was still for a long time, and she was about to turn away when he said, “Alice wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“Okay, then,” Andie said, filing that under “May doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does.” “I need you to know that I am going to get you out of here.”

He ignored her, his eyes on his book, but he didn’t turn the page. He was listening.

“It’s going to be okay. But first, I’m going to make you breakfast.”

“French toast?” he said, looking up.

“If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.”

He nodded and went back to reading.

Dear God, she thought as she went to make breakfast, he listens to me talk about ghosts and still asks for French toast.

When everybody except Alice was eating, she went to get Alice’s cereal, pulling Crumb into the kitchen with her.

“Carter didn’t kill his aunt,” she said as she got the Cheerios box from the shelf.

Crumb frowned. “What?”

“Also, you’re fired.”

Crumb drew back, shocked. “You can’t fire me. You didn’t hire me. I’ve been with this house for sixty years and-”

“And you moved a body in a violent death and left two kids uncared for after the trauma. I’m calling Mr. Archer, and then you’re gone.”

“I did it to save that boy,” Crumb said, panic making her voice rise, her watery blue eyes protruding even more. “I saved him.”

“He didn’t kill May. The thing at the foot of Alice’s bed did that.” She went to the fridge and got out the milk.

Crumb snorted. “He told you that? Well, how? That’s what I want to know. You think ghosts have hands? He did it.”

“He didn’t tell me anything. May told me. She said you dumped her body in the moat, and then instead of getting him help, you stuck him away in a corner of the house.” Andie gripped the milk carton harder on that one, and then she got a cup down from the shelf. “You just abandoned him.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to turn him in to the police,” Crumb said virtuously.

“He didn’t kill her.” Andie poured Alice’s milk. “You hung a little boy out to dry for no reason.”

The phone rang, and Andie went to pick it up, telling her, “Pack your things. You’re done.”

“That’s not fair,” Crumb said, and Andie said, “I don’t care, you’re done here.”

When she picked up the phone, it was Will. “It’s me,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about us.”

“Not now, Will, I have problems here.” She stuck the phone between her chin and her shoulder and opened the Cheerios.

“We can make it work,” Will said. “The kids can come live with us.”

“I’m going to call Mr. Archer,” Crumb said, her powdery white face even paler now. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Make sure you tell him what you did to Carter,” Andie said as she dumped Cheerios into the bowl. Then she spoke into the phone. “I appreciate the offer, Will, but no.” She put the milk back in the fridge. “Look, my plate’s a little full today.” I’ve got a TV reporter, a ghost expert, a wack-job housekeeper, two disturbed children, homicidal ghosts, and a séance this afternoon. “I have to go.”

“I think I should come down there.”

Andie clutched the Cheerios box. “Jesus, no, that’s all I’d need, more tension. I have to take care of these kids, I can’t handle anybody else.”

“That’s right,” Crumb said. “You need me.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be handling me,” Will said, annoyed. “Maybe I’d be helping you.”

Sure, right after you have me committed for believing in ghosts. “No,” she said, shoving the cereal back in the cupboard. “I absolutely cannot take one more person here. I have to go.”

She hung up, feeling annoyed, and then Crumb said, “Now you listen here,” just as Andie heard Alice scream, “No, no, NO!”

She went into the dining room, saw the plate of French toast Southie had just put in front of Alice, and said, “Chill, I have your cereal,” swapping out the toast for the bowl of Cheerios and cup of milk. “You’ll get the hang of this,” she told Southie, deciding to give him the bad news about Kelly and the cameraman later. No point in bulking up the ghosts on emotion before the séance.

Then she pulled Alice’s bat necklace out of her cereal bowl, picked up a fork, and started to eat Alice’s rejected toast.

Outside, thunder rumbled.

It was going to be a long day.

Late that afternoon, North was on the phone when he heard his door open and looked up to see his mother striding toward his desk, tailored and furious in black.

“He took that woman and went to that damn house,” she said, biting the words off. “Did you know he was going?”

North held up his hand to finish his phone call. “Thank you, Gabe. I’ll get back to you on that.” He hung up and said to his mother, “I told him not to, but today was not my day to watch him.”

“Very funny. We’re going down there.” Lydia went over to the cabinets on the wall opposite his desk and opened the one that held his TV.

“No we’re not. The worst that can happen to Sullivan is that he’ll have sex with a television reporter.”

“He’s not the only one she’s threatening.” Lydia took a VHS box out of her purse, opened it, and slid the tape inside it into the player. “This was on the news this morning. I made them send me a copy.”

A newscaster popped up in mid-sentence. “… Kelly O’Keefe with a breaking report from the south of the state,” he said, and then Kelly O’Keefe appeared, her face pale in some kind of dark paneled hall, her lips blazing red in her white face.

“I’m here… at a country house… in southern Ohio,” she whispered, leaning closer to the camera as if afraid of being overheard, “where one… of the leading lawyers… of our great city… keeps his secrets.” Her nostrils flared. “Two young children… left alone… to face… what some say… are ghosts.”

North frowned at the screen. He’d only seen Kelly O’Keefe’s broadcasts a couple of times, but she seemed odder than usual. Drunk, maybe.

The picture shifted to Kelly in a studio talking with the last nanny who’d quit.

“The place was haunted,” the girl said, her eyes huge.

Enjoying herself, North thought from long experience with witnesses.

“And those two little babies,” Kelly went on, “left there alone with no one to protect them… Their guardian was no help!”

“He told me not to contact him unless it was an emergency,” the nanny said, looking equal parts outraged and thrilled to be there. “When I told him there was something in the house, he sent the police to investigate. Of course they couldn’t find anything. The place is haunted.”

The picture shifted back to Kelly, standing in what North now recognized as the Great Hall at Archer House.

“Something…” Kelly whispered, her eyes glassy, “is very wrong… in this old house… These children… are in danger… and their guardian… a man of immense wealth and stature… does not care!” Her face grew larger as she stepped closer to the camera, her pupils dilated so that her eyes looked black. “Are you watching… North Archer?”

She lifted her chin, defiant, and North said, “Look at her eyes. She’s stoned.”

Kelly stepped back. “Tune in tomorrow, Columbus… I’ll have interviews… with the children… and proof of their neglect… at the hands of their newest nanny…”

North got up and went around to sit on the desk, his arms folded.

“… North Archer’s ex-wife.”

You’re done, O’Keefe, North thought grimly.

“… much more about… the Orphans of Archer House!”

Lydia clicked off the TV with the remote. “I’m having her killed, of course.” She turned back to North. “I know you can take care of yourself, but that kind of thing does us no good.”

North picked up the phone and punched in the number for Archer House.

“What are you doing?” Lydia snapped.

The phone rang and he got a recording claiming a disruption of service. Was O’Keefe crazy enough to cut the phone lines?

“North, pay attention. If you don’t care about what she’s doing to you, think about your brother. She’s got him alone down there, duping him because I’m damn sure he’d never let her say that about you.”

North put the phone down. “First, Sullivan is not stupid so you can stop treating him as if he’s ten. Second, she doesn’t have him alone down there. I sent Andie, remember.”

Lydia turned back to the TV, punched the eject button, and took out the tape. “Get your coat. I don’t know the way to the house, so you’ll have to come with me.”

“No.” I can do more damage to her up here.

“North, your brother and a predatory news reporter are in a house in the middle of nowhere with two disturbed orphans and your ex-wife who is not a patient woman.” Lydia put the tape in her purse. “Imagine the possibilities.”

North imagined them. The best was Andie strangling Kelly O’Keefe with videotape. The worst was O’Keefe finding out that Andie thought the house was haunted and was sending him after bodies in Britain.

“Why are you smiling?” Lydia snapped.

“Andie and Kelly O’Keefe in a smackdown.”

“She’s probably a biter,” Lydia said.

“She is.”

“I meant Kelly O’Keefe,” Lydia said, her voice frosty.

“Right,” North said. “Leave Andie to handle it.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lydia said and walked out.

In the ensuing quiet, North sat on the edge of his desk and considered his options. Some were fair-calling the station to point out libel could be expensive-and some were not-calling the McKennas to find out what string he could pull that would shut Kelly O’Keefe up about the Archers for good. If there was anything, the McKennas would find it, although they’d looked into Will Spenser and found nothing wrong with him, which was disappointing. “Well, he’s a writer,” Gabe had said when he called. “You know those guys. But no debt, no police record, people like him. He’s clean.”

Kelly O’Keefe was not going to be clean. And she was down there sticking a knife into Andie right now.

But if he showed up out of the blue, O’Keefe would think she was on to something. He needed a reason to go. Checking on his wards? He could have done that anytime, probably should have done that. He needed a reason to go back, something like Andie’s alimony checks. “I had to bring this down…”

Yeah, because FedEx was broken. He didn’t have to take anything anywhere. Unless it was something he had to deliver…

He got up and went over and opened the farthest cabinet on the end of the wall, and then reached in, far to the back, and pulled out the box that Andie had left behind, forgotten under their bed, an old cheap wood thing that she’d glued shells to in junior high or something. Really ugly. She’d loved it, and he’d put in it all the odds and ends she’d left behind, thinking he could give it back when he saw her again because he couldn’t imagine not seeing her again. And then he hadn’t seen her again.

He took it back to his desk and put it in the middle of his blotter and then opened it to see what thing he could announce was crucial to deliver in person.

Junk. Ticket stubs from concerts-why hadn’t he thrown those away? he thought even as he remembered each one, Andie close beside him in the night-and a single earring-she must have taken the other half of the pair with her-and the diamond earrings he’d given her for her birthday-late, he remembered, but he couldn’t remember why he’d bought such boring diamonds, she wouldn’t have wanted diamonds anyway, it must have been his secretary who’d bought them, he’d been too busy-and finally Polaroids, losing color with age. He pulled the photos out and went through them, seeing Andie with Southie, Andie with her first-period English class, Andie laughing with him, and then he turned over the last two, the oldest, the ones he’d taken of her the morning after they’d gotten married. She’d been tangled naked in the sheets, half awake, and he’d gone out to the car for his evidence camera and snapped the pictures, and she’d yawned and said, “What are you doing?” and then she’d smiled and he’d snapped another one…

He didn’t need a reason. He could just go down there because it was his house and his wards.

And his ex-wife.

He put everything back in the box and closed the lid, left a note on Kristin’s desk to cancel his appointments for the next two days, and went upstairs to pack an overnight bag.

He was fairly sure he knew what he was doing.

The storm knocked out the phone lines-“They must be made of tissue paper,” Andie told Southie, “they go out every fifteen minutes”-and then knocked out the sun, too, the heavy cloud cover making it dark when Andie moved Alice’s things into the nursery. “I don’t like it here,” Alice said as Andie began to move her own things in. “I like my wall drawings.”

“You can draw them again in here,” Andie said, and Alice looked at the vast expanses of white wall available to her and went to get her markers.

Andie looked around and saw no ghosts and went downstairs to help Southie get ready for the séance, feeling ahead of the game. He’d gone out earlier for groceries and liquor, but he was back now, having fully stocked the pantry and the bar.

“I don’t see why we can’t do this in the dining room,” Andie told him as they shoved an old round table into the middle of the Great Hall.

“Kelly wants it here.” Southie looked around the room. “It’s probably a good place for it. Hard to fake results in here. Not impossible, but not as easy as in a smaller room with lots of furniture.”

“I thought this Isolde woman was the best medium in Ohio.” Andie frowned. “Which, come to think of it, probably isn’t that great a distinction. How many mediums does Ohio have, anyway?”

“I think Kelly wants it in here for the filming,” Southie said. “She’s interested in ratings.” He smiled at Andie. “I, on the other hand, am interested in ghosts.”

Andie raised her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me. Your newest hobby is séances?”

“Hauntings,” Southie said. “I don’t know if there’s anything in it, but researching it has been interesting.”

“There’s something in it,” Andie said, and waited for him to laugh.

“Really.” He sat on the edge of the table. “You’ve seen them?”

“Yes. So if you’ve seen anything weird here, it’s not you. It’s real.”

“I had weird sex last night.”

“You had sex with Kelly?”

“She showed up in my room, acting strangely. It wasn’t because of the Bert and Ernie bedspread. The lights were off.”

“So of course you slept with her.” And now the cameraman is furious. Andie shook her head, picturing May sucking up power like a milkshake, making that scraping noise with the straw when she got to the bottom.

“She was naked,” Southie said, as if that explained everything. Then he frowned. “So, you really think there are ghosts here.”

“Yes, and I want them out, which is why I let you and Dennis in. It’s a shame we had to let Kelly in, too, but as you said, package deal.” She watched him, wondering if it was kinder not to tell him that Kelly was also sleeping with the cameraman or better to clue him in. May was probably already glutted from last night, maybe now was the time.

He smiled at her cheerfully: happy, uncomplicated Southie.

“Southie,” she began, and then Kelly came in looking hungover and said, “So, are we ready?”

“For what?” Andie said, looking at her with distaste.

Kelly frowned at the table. “We need candles,” she told Southie. “Go find a lot of them.”

He nodded and ambled off, and Kelly smiled brightly at Andie. “Now we’ll be filming this, and I think it would be really interesting if the children were here.”

“Over my dead body,” Andie said.

“Okay then,” Kelly said brightly. “I’ll just interview them before-”

“You will not go near my kids.”

“Your kids?” Kelly arched her eyebrows. “So you and North are adopting them?”

“Stay away from the children,” Andie said, and the note of dead seriousness must have soaked in through Kelly’s big hair because she lost her smile.

“Well, really, Andie, I’m just trying to give as unbiased a report on the ghosts as possible. The children have lived in this house longer than anyone except Mrs. Crumb. They’ll have many insights.” She flashed her toothy smile again. “So you see-”

“Suppose I give you a choice,” Andie said, watching her. “You can film the séance or you can interview the kids.”

“Oh.” Kelly brightened. “Well, I’d prefer both, of course, but if I had to choose, interviews are always better, human interest and all, and the kids are so bright that I’m sure my viewers will prefer that.” She patted Andie’s arm. “I’ll take the kids.”

Andie bit back the urge to snarl. “That’s what I thought. You don’t give a rat’s ass about ghosts, you’re here to get at those kids. I don’t know why, but trust me, if I find you anywhere near them, I’ll have your ass out on the driveway faster than Southie had you in bed last night.”

Kelly drew back, outraged, and Andie plunged on.

“You cannot talk to them, you cannot approach them, hell, I don’t want you waving to them across the Great Hall. They are forever off limits to you.”

Kelly stared at her for a long minute and then said, “I would have thought a woman would have more sympathy for me.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to rebuild my career,” Kelly said, stepping closer. “You make one mistake and it’s gone-”

“You made a woman throw up on television.”

“-but all I need is one great story and I could be back again. I just want to do a little ghost story, Andie, is that so much to ask?” She put her hand on Andie’s arm. “One woman to another?”

“You go near my kids and I promise you, you’ll throw up on TV.”

Kelly pulled her hand back. “So that offer of the kids or the séance wasn’t an offer at all. I took your offer as a contract, and a verbal contract is binding, you know.”

“So is my foot up your ass,” Andie said, as Southie came back into the Great Hall with a box of candles.

“Mrs. Crumb gave me these,” he said. “We’re all set.”

“Would you like to discuss legally binding verbal contracts with my lawyer?” Andie said to Kelly, gesturing to Southie. “Or would you like to quit now?”

Kelly glared at them both and left the room.

“You want to catch me up?” Southie said to Andie.

“I won’t let her near the kids,” Andie said.

“Of course not. She’d probably suck their souls out.” Southie started to take pillar candles out of the box.

“Isn’t this the woman you’re sleeping with?”

“Yes. She sucked my soul out last night.”

“That I didn’t need to know,” Andie said, feeling nauseated.

“Oh, no, I meant the weird, cold sex, not that she… although she did that, too.”

“Southie, I’m having a bad day-”

“Mother kept talking about her teeth but I never really thought about them until she was-”

“Southie!”

“Now I can’t stop thinking about them.”

“Southie, please stop.”

“I’m just saying, that’s a scary woman.” He pulled out a Precious Moments candle and looked at it, frowning, and then put it on the table.

“So you’re not going to sleep with her anymore,” Andie said, thinking, Good, I don’t have to tell him she was doing the cameraman, too. That’ll cool May’s jets.

“Of course I’ll sleep with her again,” Southie said. “I’ll keep the lights off. Can’t see her teeth then.”

Andie shook her head and helped him unload the last of the candle assortment onto the table, and when they were done, he hesitated, and then he said, “You know North still loves you, right?”

Andie stepped back. “What?”

“I’m not going to tell you there haven’t been other women because there have been. Quite a few, to tell you the truth.”

“Good for him,” Andie said, frowning at him while she ignored the little leap her heart had taken when he’d said “still loves you.” “Although not information I really wanted. I have other problems right now-”

“But it’s always going to be you for him,” Southie said, sounding mystified. “I do not understand this one-woman-for-life thing, but then we’re different, North and me.”

“Really? I never noticed.” Andie jerked her head toward the dining room, pretending she didn’t care. “I have to get the chairs. Want to help?”

“I’m trying to help,” Southie said, sounding exasperated. “If you and North would stop being so damn civilized and just have that knock-down-drag-out fight you’ve been spoiling for for ten years-”

“We’ve been fighting.”

“You’ve been bitching at each other. You need to just let it all out. And then everything will be fine.”

“You’re delusional,” Andie said, and went to get the chairs.

“The makeup sex would be phenomenal,” Southie called after her.

The sex was always phenomenal, Andie thought. But now there are ghosts, so no, thanks.

She picked up the first dining room chair and carried it into the Great Hall as Southie went in to get another one, trying really hard not to feel good about the idea that North still loved her. Southie was such a romantic, it was probably all in his head. Where it should have stayed.

When he came back, she said, “You annoy me.”

“Good. I’ll stop when you and North get back together.”

“Never gonna happen,” Andie said.

“Then why are you wearing his ring?”

Andie looked down at the ring she’d forgotten she was wearing. “Because I’m pretending to be married to him.”

“And why are you doing that?”

“Because…” She glared at Southie. “Hey, this is none of your business.” She didn’t have to explain anything to Southie, especially now, when she was trying to evict ghosts.

She went back to the dining room for more seating.

“Okay, fine, tell me about the ghosts,” Southie said, following her, and grateful for the change in subject, she told him everything as they set up the séance.

The medium arrived at six, just after Andie settled the kids in the library with Coke, cheese sandwiches, carrots and ranch dressing, potato chips, and strict instructions not to come into the Great Hall for any reason. Then she heard the doorknocker and went to get it, but Kelly beat her to it, letting in a lot of the storm along with her hired ghost wrangler.

“This is Isolde Hammersmith,” Kelly said, as if she’d just invented her and they should applaud.

Andie wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting a medium to look like-probably something between Madame Arcati and Miss Havisham. Kelly’s medium was somewhere between forty and death with a face like a hatchet: high forehead, high cheekbones, long nose, long chin, the verticality broken only by Cleopatra eyes, narrow green leopard-print glasses, and lips so huge and red they practically ran from ear to ear even though Isolde was not smiling. “Fucking Motel Six,” she said to Kelly, pulling a wildly patterned scarf from her explosion of black, teased Farrah hair and shaking the rain from it. “Fucking storm.”

“You should stay here for the night,” Andie said, hanging up Isolde’s coat. Putting one more person to bed on the second floor wasn’t going to cause a blip in her life at this point.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll stay here.” Isolde snorted, her blouse glittering as she turned to survey the place. She was wearing an orange, red, and yellow Picasso-print silk shirt dotted with sequins and tiny glittery beads over skintight black pants and black stilettos.

Alice was going to shriek with envy when she saw the blouse.

Isolde jerked her head in the direction of the front of the house, making her big gold bangle earrings swing. “Fucking driveway. Almost took my bumper off. And your phone is out. Harold doesn’t like it.”

Andie looked around for Harold, but Kelly said, “Harold’s her spirit guide.”

“Of course he is.” Andie tried smiling at the medium, who was surveying the stone corridor with suspicion. “Kelly thought you’d want to hold the séance in the Great Hall. We have smaller rooms if you’d rather.”

Kelly beamed at Isolde. “Oh, I’m sure the Great Hall will be perfect.”

“We’ll see,” Isolde said flatly. “Who’s this?”

Andie turned to see Dennis coming toward them, argyle-covered once more, probably trying to maintain a façade of polite neutrality but just looking academically snotty behind his glasses instead. At least his sweater wasn’t tomato-stained anymore.

“This is Professor Dennis Graff,” Andie told Isolde. “He’s a parapsychologist.”

Isolde snorted.

“Very pleased to meet you,” Dennis said, but inside, Andie was sure, he was snorting back.

“And this is Sullivan Archer,” Andie went on as Southie came out of the Great Hall to join them.

Southie stuck out his hand, flashing that charming smile.

“Very glad to have you here, Ms. Hammersmith.”

“Mrs.” Isolde ignored the smile and the hand. “So this is the full bunch?” She surveyed them all. “I don’t know.” She looked at Dennis. “Harold says you don’t believe. You should go.”

“No,” Dennis said, managing to sound polite and pig-stubborn at the same time, and Andie looked at him again and realized he was angry.

Doesn’t like charlatans, she remembered. Boston Ulrich and Mrs. Hammersmith, enemies to the death. Of course, death wasn’t what it used to be in her world…

Isolde looked at Southie. “You don’t know what you believe.”

“Open mind,” he said genially.

Isolde nodded and looked at Kelly. “You don’t believe, either. Jesus, what a mess.”

“No, no, open mind,” Kelly said brightly, but Isolde was already looking at Andie.

“And, finally we have a winner.”

“Just get rid of them,” Andie said.

“We’ll see what Harold can do,” Isolde said. “How many of them are there?”

Andie opened her mouth, but Dennis said, “You tell us.”

“Oh, sure,” Isolde said, looking unsurprised and unimpressed by Dennis. “No problem.” She paused. “Harold says you’re a putz.”

“Well, come on,” Kelly said, “Dr. Graff is our expert-”

“And Harold says you’re up to no good,” Isolde said to her. “He says you try anything funny, you’ll get your head handed to you. The spirit world is nothing to fuck around with.”

Andie began to wish for a Harold of her own.

“You got a bathroom?” Isolde said to Andie, shoving her big black leather sling bag over her shoulder.

“Right this way.” Andie led her down the hall and through the door to the little hall by the library, but Isolde stopped her as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Kelly O’Keefe,” she said.

“Hag from hell,” Andie said.

“She believes in séances about as much as I believe in TV psychics.”

“I picked that up.”

Isolde looked at her, exasperated. “Then why are you letting her do this?”

“Because we really do have ghosts,” Andie said.

Isolde stared at her for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, then. Fuck Kelly O’Keefe, let’s find out about your ghosts.”

“Thank you,” Andie said, feeling some hope for the first time. “The Great Hall is this way-”

“After I go to the bathroom,” Isolde said.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Andie said, pointing the way, and then she went to check on the kids, thinking, I love this woman.

Especially if she was going to get rid of the goddamned ghosts.